Catholic resistance to Nazi Germany

[22] Requiring the votes of the Centre Party and Conservatives, Hitler told the Reichstag on 23 March that Positive Christianity was the "unshakeable foundation of the moral and ethical life of our people", and promised not to threaten the churches or the institutions of the Republic if granted plenary powers.

[3] Historian Karl Dietrich Bracher has called 'the idea that the Catholic Church almost universally opposed Nazism, 'as questionable as the contrary thesis of a Communist mass movement against Hitler', and attributed the Centre Party's paralysis to Catholicism's 'flirtation with the new regime'.

[64] Mary Fulbrook wrote that when politics encroached on the church, Catholics were prepared to resist, but that the record was otherwise patchy and uneven, and that, with notable exceptions, "it seems that, for many Germans, adherence to the Christian faith proved compatible with at least passive acquiescence in, if not active support for, the Nazi dictatorship".

In March, Pope Pius XI issued the Mit brennender Sorge encyclical – accusing the Nazi Government of violations of the 1933 Concordat, and further that it was sowing the "tares of suspicion, discord, hatred, calumny, of secret and open fundamental hostility to Christ and His Church".

[72] While some clergymen refused ever to feign support for the regime, in the church's conflict with the state over ecclesiastical autonomy, the Catholic hierarchy adopted a strategy of "seeming acceptance of the Third Reich", by couching their criticisms as motivated merely by a desire to "point out mistakes that some of its overzealous followers committed" in order to strengthen the government.

[14] Though Faulhaber's words were cautiously framed as a discussion of "historical" Judaism, his sermons denounced the Nazi extremists who were calling for the Bible to be purged of the "Jewish" Old Testament as a grave threat to Christianity: in seeking to adhere to the central tenet of Nazism, "The anti-Semitic zealots ..." wrote Hamerow, were also undermining "the basis of Catholicism.

The government refused to give a written undertaking to halt the program, and the Vatican declared on 2 December that the policy was contrary to natural and positive Divine law: "The direct killing of an innocent person because of mental or physical defects is not allowed".

In June 1943, after being denounced by a Gestapo agent for attempting to send a memorandum on the reorganisation of the German state and its integration into a future system of world peace to Erling Eidem, the Archbishop of Uppsala, Metzger was sentenced to death.

[151] Among other notable Catholic clerics sent to Dachau were: Jean Bernard of Luxembourg, Hilary Paweł Januszewski (d.1945), Lawrence Wnuk, Ignacy Jeż and Adam Kozłowiecki of Poland; Josef Lenzel, August Froehlich, Georg Häfner and Bernhard Heinzmann of Germany.

Following Hitler's seizure of power, he fled from Germany, first to Italy, and then to Vienna, Austria, where, with the support of Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss he founded and edited an anti-Nazi weekly paper, Der Christliche Ständestaat ("The Christian Corporative State").

[178] Though Catholics were prominent in the German Resistance, according to Fest, it essentially consisted of a "motley collection of individuals who differed greatly in their social origins, habits of thought, political attitudes and methods of action" and was by and large slow to accept the need for violence to displace Hitler.

[183] In his history of the German Resistance, Peter Hoffmann wrote that "National Socialism was not simply a party like any other; with its total acceptance of criminality it was an incarnation of evil, so that all those whose minds were attuned to democracy, Christianity, freedom, humanity or even mere legality found themselves forced into alliance ...".

[192] With Poland overrun but France and the Low Countries yet to be attacked, Colonel Hans Oster of the Abwehr sent Munich lawyer and devout Catholic, Josef Müller, on a clandestine trip to Rome to seek Papal assistance in the developing plot by the German military opposition to oust Hitler.

As the newly installed Nazi Government began to instigate its program of anti-antisemitism, Pope Pius XI, through Cardinal Pacelli, who was by then serving as Vatican Secretary of State, ordered the successor Papal Nuncio in Berlin, Cesare Orsenigo, to "look into whether and how it may be possible to become involved" in their aid.

[270] Marie-Rose Gineste transported a pastoral letter from Bishop Théas of Montauban by bicycle to forty parishes, denouncing the uprooting of men and women "treated as wild animals", and the French Resistance smuggled the text to London, where it was broadcast to France by the BBC, reaching tens of thousands of homes.

[274] When Himmler visited Zagreb a year later, indicating the impending roundup of remaining Jews, Stepinac wrote Pavelić that if this occurred, he would protest for "the Catholic Church is not afraid of any secular power, whatever it may be, when it has to protect basic human values".

[284] Burzio begged Tiso directly to at least spare Catholic Jews from transportation and delivered an admonition from the Pope: "the injustice wrought by his government is harmful to the prestige of his country and enemies will exploit it to discredit clergy and the Church the world over.

[245] When AK Home Army Intelligence discovered the true fate of transports leaving the Jewish Ghetto, the council to Aid Jews – Rada Pomocy Żydom (codename Zegota) was established in late 1942, in co-operation with church groups.

[322] The Carmelite friar Lucien Bunel (Jacques de Jesus) who was sent to the Mauthausen Death Camp for sheltering three Jewish boys at his school (dramatised in the 1987 film Au revoir les enfants, made by Louis Malle, one of his former pupils).

[328] She and two British women, Mother Riccarda Beauchamp Hambrough and Sister Katherine Flanagan have been beatified for reviving the Swedish Bridgettine Order of nuns and hiding scores of Jewish families in their convent during Rome's period of occupation under the Nazis.

[204] During the war, Pius XII was praised by Western media as a "lonely voice" against tyranny in Europe and scorned by Hitler as a "Jew lover"[336] and a blackmailer on his back, whom he believed constricted his ally Mussolini and leaked confidential German correspondence to the world.

"[338] Pius XI saw the rising tide of Totalitarianism with alarm and delivered three papal encyclicals challenging the new creeds: against Italian Fascism Non abbiamo bisogno (1931; We Do Not Need to Acquaint You); against Nazism Mit brennender Sorge (1937; "With Deep Anxiety") and against atheist Communist Divini redemptoris (1937; "Divine Redeemer").

[343] Pius wrote of "Christians unfortunately more in name than in fact" showing "cowardice" in the face of persecution by these creeds, and called for resistance: Who among "the Soldiers of Christ" – ecclesiastic or layman – does not feel himself incited and spurred on to a greater vigilance, to a more determined resistance, by the sight of the ever-increasing host of Christ's enemies ... who ... wantonly break the Tables of God's Commandments to substitute other tables and other standards stripped of the ethical content of the Revelation on Sinai, standards in which the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount and of the Cross has no place?Pius wrote of a persecuted church and a time requiring "charity" for victims who had a "right" to compassion.

[351] He again warned against the evils of worshipping the state, and forced labor and addressed the racial persecutions in the following terms:"Humanity owes this vow to those hundreds of thousands who, without any fault on their part, sometimes only because of their nationality or race, have been consigned to death or to a slow decline".

[257] With Poland overrun but France and the Low Countries yet to be attacked, Colonel Hans Oster of the Abwehr sent Munich lawyer and devout Catholic, Josef Müller, on a clandestine trip to Rome to seek Papal assistance in the developing plot by the German military opposition to oust Hitler.

[198] At a special mass at St Peters for the victims of the war, held in November 1940, soon after the commencement of the London Blitz bombing by the Luftwaffe, Pius preached in his homily: "may the whirlwinds, that in the light of day or the dark of night, scatter terror, fire, destruction, and slaughter on helpless folk cease.

Following 4 June 1944 Liberation of Rome by the Allies, Cardinal Tisserant delivered a letter from De Gaulle, assuring the Pontiff of the filial respect and attachment of the French people, and noting that their long wartime suffering had been attenuated by the Pope's "testimonies of paternal affection".

[360] De Gaulle himself came to meet the Pope on 30 June, following which, the French leader wrote of great admiration for Pius, and assessed him to be a pious, compassionate and thoughtful figure, upon whom the problems of world situation weighed heavily.

Davies wrote that the sisters began their evening prayers gathered around the tabernacle, surrounded by a thousand people, as German aircraft flew overhead and "the church collapsed in one thunderous explosion ... rescue teams dug to save the living ... a much diminished convent choir was singing to encourage them.

[275] In 1941, Pope Pius XII dispatched Giuseppe Marcone as Apostolic Visitor to Croatia, in order to assist Stepinac and the Croatian Episcopate in "combating the evil influence of neo-pagan propaganda which could be exercised in the organization of the new state".

The Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler was anti-clerical and hostile to the teachings of the Catholic Church. [ 9 ] [ 10 ]
The Nazi propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels , among the most aggressive anti-clerical Nazis, wrote that there was "an insoluble opposition between the Christian and a heroic-German world view". [ 9 ]
Pope Pius XI in 1932
Cardinal Faulhaber (around 1936)
Bishop Konrad von Preysing was Bishop of Berlin, the capital city of Nazi Germany. He provided aid to the city's Jews and had links to the German Resistance .
Bishop Clemens August von Galen October 1933
Memorial tablet for Joseph Frings at the parish church of Cologne-Fühlingen.
Clemens August Graf von Galen, Bishop of Münster spoke out against euthanasia in Nazi Germany. [ 93 ]
Rupert Mayer was sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp in 1939.
Fr. Otto Müller of the German Resistance, was arrested following the 1944 July Plot , and died in police custody.
Augustin Rösch (centre) was the wartime Jesuit Provincial of Bavaria and one of three Jesuits in the inner Kreisau Circle of the German Resistance.
The Jesuit Alfred Delp was an influential member of the Kreisau Circle – one of the few clandestine German Resistance groups operating inside Nazi Germany. He was executed in February 1945. [ 125 ]
Prisoner barracks at Dachau Concentration Camp , where the Nazis established a dedicated clergy barracks for clerical opponents of the regime [ 134 ]
Antoni Zawistowski was tortured and murdered at Dachau in 1942. 1,780 Polish clergy were sent to Dachau, and many are remembered among the 108 Polish Martyrs of World War II .
Erich Klausener , the head of Catholic Action , was assassinated in Hitler's "Night of the Long Knives" purge of 1934. [ 37 ]
Fritz Gerlich , editor of Munich's Catholic weekly, Der Gerade Weg , and critic of the Nazies, was among the high-profile Catholic opposition figures targeted for assassination in the 1934 Night of the Long Knives.
Catholic politician Eugen Bolz at the People's Court . Staatspräsident of Württemberg in 1933, he was overthrown by the Nazis. Later arrested for his role in the 20 July Plot to overthrow Hitler, he was beheaded in January 1945.
Catholic Centre Party politician Josef Wirmer (far right) in the People's Court, 1944. Wirmer has worked to forge ties between the German Resistance and the trade unions.
Eugenio Pacelli (later Pope Pius XII) served as Pius XI 's diplomatic representative in Germany (1917–1929) and then as Vatican Secretary of State (1929–1939), during which period he delivered multiple denunciations of Nazi racial ideology.
The Papal Palace of Castel Gandolfo, the Pope's summer residence, was thrown open to Jews fleeing the Nazi roundups in Northern Italy. In Rome, Pope Pius XII had ordered the city's Catholic institutions to open themselves to the Jews, and 4715 of the 5715 people listed for deportation by the Nazis were sheltered in 150 institutions.
Memorial to Margit Slachta of the Sisters of Social Service
Memorial plaque to Papal Nuncio to Hungary, Angelo Rotta, honored as a Righteous Gentile
Cardinal Jozef-Ernest van Roey , head of the church in Belgium, was active in rescuing Jews.
The Archbishop of Toulouse , Jules-Géraud Saliège led a powerful denunciation of the mistreatment of Jews in 1942.
Archbishop Aloysius Stepinac of Zagreb initially welcomed the Independent State of Croatia granted by Nazi Germany, but subsequently condemned the Nazi-aligned state's atrocities against Jews and Serbs.
Irena Sendlerowa , headed the children's section of Żegota , the council to Aid Jews, founded by Catholic activists.
Zofia Kossak-Szczucka , co-founder of Zegota .
Assisi Cathedral . The Bishop of Assisi established the Assisi Network , in which the churches, monasteries and convents of Assisi served as a safe haven for several hundred Jews during the German occupation.
The Capuchin Maria Benedetto was named acting president of the DELASEM Jewish resistance group following the arrest of its Jewish president.
Pope Pius XI issued the anti-Nazi encyclical Mit brennender Sorge in 1937. It was in part drafted by his successor pontiff, Cardinal Pacelli ( Pius XII ).
Members of the Canadian Royal 22e Regiment in audience with Pope Pius XII , following the 1944 Liberation of Rome.
Colonel General Ludwig Beck , a key figure in the German Resistance , secretly advised the Pope of plots against Hitler through emissaries.
General Charles de Gaulle , leader of the Free French, and admirer of Pope Pius XII, met with the pontiff following the Liberation of Rome.
British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill , also had an audience with the Pope following the Liberation of Rome. Pius never met with Hitler, despite a long diplomatic career.
Maria Restituta was among the church dissidents arrested in Austria and executed by the Nazi regime.
Friedrich Hoffman, a Czech priest, testifies at the trial of former camp personnel from Dachau , where over a thousand clergy were murdered. 122 Czechoslovak priests were imprisoned there, but Poles constituted the largest proportion of those imprisoned in the dedicated Clergy Barracks .
Public execution of Polish priests and civilians in Bydgoszcz's Old Market Square on 9 September 1939. The Polish Home Army was conscious of the link between morale and religious practice and the Catholic religion was integral to much Polish resistance.
The Polish Franciscan Maximillian Kolbe was killed at Auschwitz.
Dead body of the Jesuit Edward Kosibowicz , killed in the Massacre in the Jesuit monastery on Rakowiecka Street in Warsaw (1944) .
Rank did not protect Polish clergymen. Bishop Antoni Julian Nowowiejski met his death at Soldau concentration camp . He is remembered as one of the 108 Polish Martyrs of World War II .
The Belgian Jesuit Jean-Baptiste Janssens served as Superior General of the Jesuits in Belgium and was honoured as Righteous Gentile by Yad Vashem.
Charles de Gaulle 's Free French chose the red Cross of Lorraine as the symbol of their cause. The Cross had been the standard of the iconic French Catholic saint, Joan of Arc .
An edition of the Témoignage chrétien . The paper was published clandestinely by Pierre Chaillet and other Jesuits to offer " Spiritual Resistance to Hitlerism" .
Sára Salkaházi was shot for sheltering Jews in 1944. She was a member of Margit Slachta 's Hungarian Sisters of Social Service , who are credited with saving thousands of Jews.